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Spain to maintain level 4 terrorist alert, increase border patrols

Xinhua, July 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Acting Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz confirmed on Friday that Spain would maintain its current level 4 alert against a terrorist attack in the wake of the killing of 84 people in the French city of Nice on Thursday.

A man driving a truck at high speed along the seafront following the Bastille Day celebrations on Thursday night ploughed into several people. A total of 48 people are still in hospital in critical condition.

Spain has a five-tier terrorist alert level. Fernandez Diaz explained the country had been at a level 4 since the killing of 38 tourists on a beach in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia on June 26, 2015.

He said the only reason to move up to a level 5 was if "it was known an attack was imminent in Spain," and that currently there was no such information.

Speaking after an emergency meeting of Spain's anti-terrorism commission, which was attended by representatives of all of Spain's political parties as well as members of the security forces, Fernandez Diaz did, however, announce an increase in police presence at airports, tourist destinations, and popular public places, as well as implementing extra controls on the border with France.

Earlier in the day, acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy expressed Spain's solidarity and offered help and support after what he described as a "brutal terrorist attack."

Those words were echoed by the leaders of Spain's main political parties, while a minute of silence for the victims was held at the Spanish Congress on Friday morning.

Socialist Workers' Party leader Pedro Sanchez tweeted he was "dismayed at the news coming out of Nice. Our solidarity with the victims and all our support to the French people," while Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias insisted terrorism "has to be fought with the spirit of July 14,"-- a day commemorating the start of the French Revolution -- while also expressing his "solidarity with the French people and the families of the victims."

Finally, acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo confirmed the Spanish consul in Marseilles had travelled to Nice, but that "for the moment," there were no reports of Spaniards having been among the victims. Endit